


Cool For The Summer

by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters



Category: DCU (Comics), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Frozen (Disney Movies), Historical RPF, Incredibles (Pixar Movies), Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Does it count as necrophilia to have sex with a ghost?, F/F, Hauntings, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Menstruation, Prison, asking for a friend, beheadings, playing fast and loose with history
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29246346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters/pseuds/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Summary: Stories for Femslash February
Relationships: Cassandra Cain/Stephanie Brown, Elsa/Violet Parr, Implied Anne Boleyn/George Boleyn, Implied Anne Boleyn/Jane Seymour, Marie Antoinette/Anne Boleyn
Kudos: 11





	1. A Gift To You, My Final Breaths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marie Antoinette is haunted by a peculiar vision--or visitor--in the last days of her imprisonment. 2021.

Marie doesn't know when she started dreaming about the dark-haired woman (to be honest, she doesn't even know if she _is_ dreaming). Someone here would probably tell her the date if she asked for it, but she doesn't really see the point. She's in a cell and there's no getting out, no parties or engagements to prepare for. Knowing how long she's been there would probably make it feel worse, if that's possible.

When she first felt someone slipping into her bed she thought it was one of the ladies she used to dally with. Marie let herself be taken, feeling the first real pleasure she'd had in so long, melting into a body that was soft and warm and denied her nothing. She had decided it was a dream, since the people who ~~attended~~ guarded her hadn't woken up.

She didn't open her eyes for fear that she'd find a monster looking over at her, and that the dream had melted into a nightmare. Her visitor didn't ask her to look, didn't ask her anything, didn't speak except to shiver and moan. 

Marie wondered if Hans would visit her the next night, or perhaps even her husband. But it was always the same body, the same scent, and after a while it dawned on her that the scent wasn't anything like that of her ladies, or anyone else she knew. There was something foreign about it, and...old-fashioned in a way Marie couldn't put her finger on.

Why would she dream of a stranger when there were so many real, living people she missed with all her heart? Marie didn't know the answer to that question, even though she spent hours lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling, thinking about it.

Then there was the bizarre coincidence that her menses had only started up the night after the stranger's head had plunged between her thighs, as if reawakening her blood with soft kisses. She didn't know why she had connected these events in her head, or why she still felt her blood flowing during her dreams, a fact that seemed to bother the stranger not at all.

A guard came into her cell once, pinned her down, grabbed at her breasts while babbling about getting to fuck the Queen, only to lurch back in disgust when he realized she was bleeding. After the shaking and sobbing had stopped she'd felt a peculiar gratitude to her visitor for "protecting" her in some way, although she didn't feel very grateful every time memories of the incident sent her running to spill her guts in the chamber pot.

These were the thoughts that were swirling in Marie's mind the night her curiosity and confusion overcame her fear. She let her guard down a little, just enough for her eyes to flicker open with a gasp as the phantom brought them both to climax.

It was a full moon that night, silver spilling in through the window and pooling across the cell. She could make out stretch marks on a pale stomach, soft white breasts, long black hair tumbling down her back....and a face that she had never seen before in her life.

Marie's gasp was strangled in her throat when her eyes flickered back to the stranger's neck. There was a mole there, winking hello to her like some jewel buried in her skin. And there was thick, angry red scar wrapped around her neck like a choker.

She sucked in a breath, pressing her back against the wall. The woman sat back on her knees and faced her, an amused smile on her lips. For a few moments, there was silence.

"I was wondering when you'd find the courage to look," the woman said. She spoke French with the barest hint of an accent, only there was some...off about her vocabulary, the same way her perfume had been off.

"Who are you?" Marie breathed.

The woman cocked her head. "Didn't they tell you about me?" She wiggled her fingers, and for the first time Marie saw the little extra finger on her left hand--how had she not felt that before? "Have the people forgotten King Henry's wicked witch queen?"

"I...." She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember. "I, I think there was a courtier who told me something like that once."

The woman smiled. "A rival, then? Trying to warn you about what happens to interloping queens?" Marie winced at the memory of those ugly first days in Austria.

"Do you remember my name?" the woman asked, brushing a finger along Marie's jaw.

Marie straightened her back, trying to regain her wits. "Anne Boleyn," she said carefully. "Or Nan Bullen, they called you both. Henry the Eighth's wife, the second of six." She remembered that detail very well, had been shocked enough to believe it fiction until she asked around.

It dawned on her that Anne might be hurt by the way she said it, but Marie pushed the feelings away. Why worry about insulting someone who couldn't possibly by real?

Anne just shrugged. "And you're Marie Antoinette," she replied. "Madame Deficit, they call you. The last queen of France, if the commoners have their way."

Marie winced at the name. _Madame Deficit._ Like everything else about her life these days, it was a punishment for her mistakes. And she had made many mistakes, mistakes that some people were saying she'd have to pay for in blood.

"Is that why I dreamed of you?" she asked, surprised at herself. "Seeking some kind of _kinship?"_

Anne blinked. "You don't think I'm real?"

"Are you?" Marie asked.

"Would you believe if I said yes?" Anne asked, reaching up to run a finger through Marie's hair. Her breath hitched at the touch.

"I don't know," she admitted, hands shaking at her lap. "I don't know, I...my mother always told me not to believe in such silly things, but she also told me that the normal way of things would last forever and I don't _fucking_ know." She knew cursing wasn't worthy of a queen, but she didn't feel like a queen right now. She felt like a small, scared girl.

It dawned on her that she was crying and she winced, scrubbing at her face.

"Hush," Anne whispered, pulling her close, and god, she _felt_ real, her warm skin and soft scent felt so real. "It's alright to cry, now. Crying kept me from breaking completely in the last days."

"'The last days'," Marie murmured into her shoulder. "Is that why you're here? Do you think I'm going to die?"

"Maybe," Anne replied. "Or maybe I'm hoping to see a queen survive where I didn't."

It was a lie. Marie knew it was a lie, deep in her core, although later she'd be able to briefly convince herself otherwise. Right now, she felt herself sagging in defeat.

Anne planted a soft kiss on Marie's shoulder, lowering them both to the bed. "There's not much you can shape here," she whispered, running her hands up Marie's thighs again. "But you can shape this. I want you to shape this."

Marie kept her eyes open this time. Her head was full of dark ugly things, and looking at Anne could keep them away, at least for a while.

Anne keeps coming back, even when the moon starts to disappear and Marie can't make out her face anymore. They fuck, and Marie's blood spots Anne's thighs with her caring not a whit.

"Are you making me bleed?" she asks, once.

"Perhaps," Anne replies. She pauses, then asks hesitantly, "Are the guards...do they know you're bleeding?"

"Yes," Marie says, a mix of ruefulness and relief in her voice. "And they know I haven't stopped." She nestles a little closer to Anne and asks, carefully, "Did--did someone help you bleed, in the Tower?"

Silence. Then, "No." Anne pulls Marie into a kiss before she can say anything else.

After that, Marie tries to tell herself that this her nightly visitor isn't real, because that way she can pretend that what happened to Anne wasn't real.

(Of course, she tried to convince herself that what was happening to the peasants of France wasn't real, and look how that turned out).

They talk, sometimes, about other things. They discuss the men and women they've known and love.

"I was loyal to Henry," Anne insists. "I _had_ to be. I even tried to avoid _women_ after the coronation, not that anyone would have done anything if I had. I was faithful; I tried to be. I...."

She sighs. "My brother, he, he was _worried_ about the fact that I'd so many problems conceiving. He wanted to _help,_ make sure our family stayed in power." She winces. "It was only one night. Elizabeth...Elizabeth wasn't his, thank God."

"I'm sorry," Marie whispers.

"It's all right," Anne says quickly.

"No, it's not," Marie says. "Do you want me to help you forget?"

"You can try," Anne says, a bit of playfulness that may or not have been forced in her voice, rolling back on top of her.

Later she discusses Jane Seymour, her maid, her lover, her successor. "She was so pretty," Anne murmurs. "Too pretty for Henry and me. I pressed a knife to her throat once, you know, trying to see if she was telling tales about me. Then I realized that she didn't have to tell anyone anything--I was already dead. I always wondered what it was like for her afterwards, if she dreamed of me. I couldn't find her myself, you see, I was...lost. Broken."

"Is that what happens to ghosts?" Marie says, shivering as she reminds herself that it doesn't really matter, because this is a dream.

"Sometimes, if we're sad and mad enough," Anne admits. She squeezes Marie's hand and presses a kiss to her tangled hair. "I won't let you break," she says. "I promise." And if it weren't a dream, Marie might be worried about whether anyone could ever keep such an oath in a world like this.

They talk about children, too.

"I think the hole I left in Elizabeth's life was a better teacher than I could have been," Anne confesses once. "She never married. She survived, she died in her own bed." Marie would like to say she's exaggerating the dangers of marriage, but, well...the people of France wouldn't be clamoring for her death if she'd stayed in Austria, would they?

"If I didn't have a husband," she admits. "I wouldn't have a family to miss." And she does miss them, painfully so. Her children ripped from her arms, little Louis forced to speak against his own mother in the cruelest way possible....her husband butchered like a pig....Her lovers exiled or executed. "It hurts. I told the guards I couldn't be hurt anymore, but I was lying."

She glances over at Anne. "If you were just a dream, you might tell me that things would get will get better, that the pain will go away, that I'll get back everything I've lost. Or you might just tell me the truth, because that's what I expect."

Anne shrugs, her shoulders rustling the bed. "Ghosts are just another kind of dream, aren't they? Does it really matter what kind they are?" Marie doesn't know what to say to that, so she just starts planting soft kisses on Anne's stomach and breasts, trying not to think about the family that stemmed from them, the family that is long gone from England's throne.

"If it's a dream, they won't be able to hear us," Anne says when Marie finally asks about her minders. "If I'm a ghost, that just means I can keep brush their minds around a little, keep them from waking up. And before you ask, no, it's not witchcraft. If I was a witch, I wouldn't have let them get me in the first place, now would I?"

It makes sense now that Marie thinks about it, and she wonders how the rumor lasted for so long, why anyone thinks a _true_ witch is someone who can be caught.

"I'm old," Marie murmurs once, running a finger along her own sagging thigh. "That's why this has to be a dream. You're too beautiful to be here just for me."

"Every women thinks she is old, especially a royal one," Anne murmurs. "Perhaps I'm just drawn to the extra years you lived, to the extra life bottled up in your skin." She presses her lips to that very skin and breathes deep.

Anne asks about how humanity has changed and grown, in whatever small ways, and Marie answers as best she can. She talks about whatever technological advancements or discovers she's heard of, not that such things have ever really been the business or interest of courts.

They discuss changes in the French court from the time Anne was there, and Anne sounds depressed at all the fresh layers of constricting etiquette piled on the French court. Her mutterings give Marie a painful reminder about how she used to complain, back when she was young and staggering in from Austria, and changes the conversation quickly.

"Does it hurt?" she asks Anne once.

"Yes," the other woman replies immediately. "But perhaps it'll be easier for you, with a machine instead of a headsman. Beheadings were such a game of chance in the old days. I was lucky to get a big sword and a thin neck." She says all this so casually, and that might be the most horrific thing.

Marie refuses to let herself think about that conversation-dream in the days to come, so of course it haunts her mind and triggers occasional bouts of shaking.

"We made mistakes," Anne admits a few nights later. "You know we did. You forgot how to keep your eyes and ears open, and I let my ambition lead me to the side of a mad king. But in the end we were still both women trying to make our way in the system, and the system had no time for us."

"So we're just supposed to accept it?" Marie asks, braiding Anne's hair, her fingers slow and careful in the dim light. She's no hairdresser, but she's spent enough time in the company of them ton get a basic of sense of things.

"Oh, rage all you want," Anne says. "I did plenty of that in the last few days. Ripped a guard's eye out with my fingers--he told everybody it happened in a tavern fight, no one bothered to write it done."

She plants a kiss on Marie's neck, sending tremors through her fingers and into Anne's braid. "Raging is easier with a companion, you've found. Even if the companion is just one of your own demons."

Oh, Marie _rages_ after her trial. She knew what was coming, of course, but to actually _face_ it, earned or no....She walks back to her cell in a daze, then crumbles once she's inside.

She punches things and screams things and smashes things, she resists every attempt to hold her down until they just march out of the room and leave her alone. Eventually she collapses on the ruined mattress, sobbing herself to sleep, and awakes in Anne's arms.

They fuck violently, brutally, screaming each other's guilt and outrage and grief and sorrow in one another's faces. Marie tears her fingers into Anne's neck until blood comes pumping down her hand, warm and wet. They hiss the names of other lovers in each other's ears and relish their own accompanying pain.

 _"Jane,"_ Anne whispers at some point. _"Plain Jane, pretty Jane, give the queen your cunt."_ Marie doesn't remember who Jane is, doesn't care. Any chance to escape this twisted, damned old body of hers is a good thing.

She lets herself drown in Anne's black waterfall of hair and a part of her stays there.

Afterwards, they curl up together, skin wet with one another's tears. Marie doesn't know if Anne is supposed to be crying for Marie or for herself, doesn't really care. All she knows is that she's not alone.

In the last few days, all the walls break down. They talk about the things the guards did to Anne, they talk about the abuse that's probably being inflicted on Marie's children, paying the price for their parents' sins.

"All I have to hope for is them being _just_ beaten," Marie sobs. Anne strokes her hair, tries to murmurs some comfort, but it falls flat. Why wouldn't it? She already broke down in _Marie's_ and confessed how she can sometimes still feel the guards inside her, even after she's dead.

They talk about how much they want or have wanted to rip the walls of the prison down, burn their captors to ash, finds the ones who condemned them and tear them to pieces.

"I never loved Henry," Anne confesses. "But it took a while before I learned to _hate_ him."

"What did those fuckers expect me to do?" Marie hisses later. "Rewrite the system, undo all of Louis' grandfathers' sins? I wasn't perfect," (she can admit that now, near the end) "but I didn't start us on this path, or keep us on it. I _couldn't_ have.

In their more tired, indifferent periods, they talk about the impact of their deaths. "My rise caused some changes," Anne says, "Even if my death was mostly scandal. But you....when you fell everything changed. It's still changing."

"I don't want to be a catalyst," Marie mutters. "I want to be a _person."_

"Oh, Marie," Anne whispers, planting a soft kiss on Marie's mouth, her lips sticky with Marie's blood. "Queens are so _rarely_ allowed to be people."

Marie feels the urge to hit her for that, so she does. They make love violently, roughly, leaving the bed in a ruin. Marie wakes up feeling sore and tired, and doesn't move much until she falls back asleep.

The next time she sees Anne, her touch is soft and tender, accompanied by gentle kisses and pretty words. The proper treatment for a dying woman.

Marie follows the guards out of her cell and down the corridor, head raised high. They accused her of frilliness and silliness, and they may have been right when such things were available to her, but no matter what they say or how they stole her title she is still a queen. She will meet her end with a queen's steel.

Still, she feels an urge to cry when they roughly saw off her hair. It's silly, really; it's been so long since the towering piles of her glory days, but still...It's _hers_ , one more thing she's losing to change. She digs her hands into her pockets, trying to compose herself.

And she feels something there.

Marie blinks, shocked, wondering if she's gone mad. But the object doesn't appear as if she clings to it, as she's led down the halls and dragged, blinking, into the sunlight. It's perhaps the only thing that keeps her standing when she's hit with a wave of thrown trash and insults, gifts from a people that once cheered her name with genuine fervor.

She's hustled to the wooden cart and roughly dumped on board, their laughter ringing in her ears. They don't scream at her for her negligence, her ignorance, her failed reforms and balking at change, her _real_ sins. They repeat the terrible lies that were spread about her, about her relationship with her son, the words "let them eat cake!" that have been attributed to so many women, her crime of being born to a royal family and arranged to marry a royal man.

Marie hunches herself up, hiding from a nation that was nowhere to direct her fury, and pulls an object out of her pocket.

It's a lock of raven-black hair, smelling faintly of old-fashioned perfume.

"You were real," Marie breathes. All the wonderful things Anne said, all the terrible things, everything that happened to her, every truth she uncovered about Marie...they were all real.

"Why?" she asks, looking up at Anne as she sits on the other side of the cart, hair rippling in the wind like a flag of death. She looks even lovelier in the daylight. "Why make me wonder for so long?"

Anne shrugs. "You needed someone to love, and I was bored drifting between worlds. I thought it would be easier to be held by a dream than a ghost."

"Aren't they almost the same thing?" Marie reminds her.

"Not quite," Anne says, reaching out to squeeze her hand. She glances around the cart. "I think this might be even more rickety than mine."

Marie bites down a laugh, even though the joke isn't really funny. She's not really laughing at that, she supposes--she's laughing at the cruel, wonderful absurdity of her world. She reaches out and pulls Anne close, draws strength from a dead woman because all the live ones have been taken for her.

She's alone again when she steps out of the wagon, still winding the black hair around her fingers and blinking back tears. But in the distance she can hear Anne humming a strange British lullaby, and the noise helps drown out the buzz of screaming hate that's gathered around her head.

"Pardon me, monsieur," she says as she steps on her soon-to-be-murderer's foot. "I did not mean to do it." She's apologizing for everything, really, everything she and the French royal family have done wrong, all of the many mistakes they've made.

(There's a lot of other things she wants to say, but she's not in the mood for her final words to be "fuck you all straight to hell."

She's pushed to her knees, her head fitted through the terrible hole, and Anne's kneeling in front of her. "At least you get to see," she says, her eyes looking very old and sad and tired. She reaches out to cup Marie's face. "You know, you have a beautiful bone structure."

"Will I see you?" Marie whispers. If the crowd sees her lips moving, they no doubt assume she's praying. "After?" She's not bleeding anymore, she realizes--it stopped last night, and she doesn't know whether to yell at Annie or laugh with her at the irony.

"I hope so," Anne murmurs. "More than anything, I hope so." She leans close, the line around her neck glittering in the sun like a ring of rubies. "I'll try to take you aware from here, fast. It's no fun seeing your own body." She digs hungry hands in Marie's hair--Marie can feel the strands turning white at her touch, but an ominous creak overhead reminds her that she doesn't have the time or the reason to care.

"I love you," she says, hoping it's true.

"I love you too," Anne replies, and Marie suspects she's hoping the same, hoping that two damaged creatures like them are still capable of love.

Their lips meet as the blade comes crashing down.


	2. Little Purple Riding Hood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassanie DCU/Little Red Riding Hood fusion. Mostly pre-slash, but not entirely. 2021.

At first, Cassandra thinks the blond girl is here to die. Or challenge her, which is basically the same thing. Why else would you wear _purple_ into the monster's forest?

Every once in a while she'll get a knight in a shining armor, swaggering through her forest. She can tell from a distance whether they're cruel or merely confused; she'll give the confused ones a good thrashing until they know not to come back and eat the cruel ones for dinner.

(Eating the cruel ones reminds her of dark rooms and cold chains and screaming targets, of _him_ , the father-monster with his whips and brands and bloody hands, and how his body tasted in her mouth, and the guilt and horror and twisted grief of when she came down from her black rage. But she eats them anyway, because it's not right to waste, and maybe she's trying to torture herself just a little bit).

But anyway, there's a girl here, marching through the path, cursing every time she drips or steps in something icky, which is more often than for some and less than for others. She's got the hood of her purple cloak up, but Cassandra can see the flash of golden hair framing her tanned (not pretty, things aren't allowed to be pretty for you) face. A pack swings off her back, and there's a stick at her side, but so far she's only used to flip snakes out of her way.

Her body language is....strange. It doesn't says _fear_ or _hunt_ or _lust_ the way so many other bodies do. There's a kind of relief in the way she walks, as if she's escaping something rather than heading somewhere. She has the foulest words for rocks and roots, she stamps on flowers with impunity, but there's respect and awe in the way she watches the birds and squirrels, even the snakes and spiders.

Little voices in Cassandra's mind whisper _kindness._ _Strength._ _Courage._ Useless, she thinks. She should be analyzing this girl's potential fighting style, not dreaming up childish platitudes.

Still, she finds herself following the girl--the target--for far longer than she should. Eventually Cassandra stirs herself into action, reminding herself that if this girl should become too comfortable in her woods, other people might come, and more people after them, until there are too many for even her to defeat at once. She can't put herself _(or them)_ at risk on a whim.

So she grits her teeth and leaps from a branch, landing noiselessly on the path before the girl. The stranger staggers backward with a shocked yelp, and Cassandra waits for the shriek of terror, the frantic lashing out with the stick, the eventual desperate flight from the big bad wolf.

Because Cassandra is a wolf, and a monster, and everything they say she is. Her shaggy black hair spills down her back, full of twigs and leaves--no bugs, though, nothing lives for long on (or in) her body. She is far too tall and muscular for a normal girl, her skin a mix of black patches of fur and tough, scarred golden flesh.

Her teeth are razor sharp, her clothing is a mix of woven leaves and things stolen from unwary travelers, her fingers can shift into claws at a moment's notice _._ Her devilish red-black eyes are always moving, always cataloguing and analyzing, never stopping _(she can't stop)._

 _A perfect horror,_ her father called her. And he may have been worse, but she is still precisely what he made her. She knows this. Everyone knows this.

The blond girl, apparently, does not. Because when she her balance regains there's still surprise in her eyes, still a hand on her heart, but everything else about her body language screams _wonder_ and _awe_ , maybe even _admiration_. She's willing to fight if need be, and yet something tells Cassandra she doesn't _expect_ a fight.

"Whoa...." the girl breathes, extending a hand. "I-- _wow._ It's _you,_ I....I didn't think you were _real."_

Cassandra blinks, not sure what to say to that (her father never expected words from her, no one ever has, the magic that made her this way has sent words slipping through her fingers since she was very small).

"I," the girl shuffles her feet, looking nervous. "I didn't mean to freak you out." _What?_ "It's just you startled me, and...wow, it's true what they say, isn't it? You really do move like a ghost." She peers at Cassandra, still reeking admiration. "But you don't wear the teeth of your enemies as a necklace so that's, um, a relief."

Silence. Cassandra is starting to think this girl is mad.

"My name's, uh, Stephanie, by the way," says the girl. "Stephanie Brown." She extends a hand cautiously.

Handshake. Handshake. She's seen her father use those, she knows that's how he made deals with _(other monsters)_. Cassandra sheathes her claws and extends her hand carefully, feeling the calluses in the girl's palm. This is the girl's non-dominant hand, she realizes, is she holding a weapon in the other--but no, her other hand is empty, and from the way it's hanging Cassandra can tell she has

(bruises, bruised skin, black and purple bruises, skin gripped too tight and hard by hungry fingers, cruel fingers, crueler than this girl this target this _Stephanie)_

"What's yours?"

Cassandra stiffens, yanked out of the _(_ _whirlpool)_ reverie by the question. The girl is looking at her expectantly, and sometimes in Cassandra doesn't want to impress her.

She lifts her head, trying her absolutely hardest to get her act together. "Ca...." She almost flinches at the sound of her own voice, so rusty with disuse, but it doesn't seem to bother Stephanie, so she forces herself to get her act together. "Ca-ss-an-dra."

"Wow," Stephanie says, nodding to herself. "That is a _cool_ name."

No one has ever called her _cool._ Cassandra's not even completely certain what it means, although the girl says it like a compliment, adding to the "she's crazy" theory because _no one_ gives Cassandra compliments.

However, crazy people rarely finds their way to Cassandra's forest, so how to explain this girl? Cassandra clenches her fists, trying to remember the last time she asked a question (and forget all the pain that usually came from doing so).

"Why?" she manages to ask, gesture at the surrounding forest, and immediately feeling stupid. _She won't understand, she'll just think I'm a dumb dog, this is why father never let you talk..._ she's surprised at the way the possibility makes her heart skip. Why should she care what some nutty human thinks?

But the girl just cocks her head. "You mean, why am I here?" Cassandra almost shakes her head before remembering that this isn't the proper response, and nods (too eagerly, too eagerly) instead.

"My dad's a dipshit," the girl replies in an all too cheerful tone, rubbing her arm ruefully against her body, and Cassandra has a sudden urge to make her _not do that_ , because what if it makes things worse?

_(What does she care?_

_She thinks she might end up caring far too much)_

"I've always known he was a dipshit," the girl continues. "But now that my mo--" She sucks in a breath, and the urge to _comfort_ hisses through Cass' bones. "Now that I've had a chance to _mature,"_ she says far too carefully, "I can _admit_ to myself as a dipsit. So I did, and I celebrated by tossing him off a cliff and running off with his cash."

She waves gaily around her head, her movements saturated with _relief guilt grief fear survival hope._ "Then I came out here, where none of his goons would _ever_ go. Everybody wets their pants around these woods--except for me. But people think I'm _nuts."_

 _Yes,_ Cassandra thinks, looking at the girl. _Yes, you are nuts._ But the thought doesn't bother her as much as it should, and not only because she knows she can take this girl down in a heartbeat.

"Where?" she asks, waving up into the distance.

"Not sure," Stephanie says, shrugging gracefully ( _graceful? How can a shrug be graceful? What is wrong with you?)_ "There's a whole wide world out there, and if I think I can make an okay go of it if I don't get eaten first.

Cassandra has thought about the world outside these woods, beyond the burnt ruins of her father's house; she likes these woods well enough, she supposes, but she's never really though about spending the rest of her life here. _But_ she would put everyone at risk should she leave, if they didn't destroy her first. Her father told her so.

_(Father had also told her that girls like this one would always run away from her screaming)_

Stephanie pauses, looking Cassandra up and down. "Do you want to come with?"

Cassandra stares.

"I don't wanna intrude, of course," Stephanie adds quickly. "If you're got other stuff to do, that's fine. It's just...it's kind of lonely out here, and it'd be really nice to have someone to talk to--or force to listen to me, really."

The idea is ridiculous, and Cassandra should be doing her level best to laugh at it. "Dangerous," she forces out, jabbing a finger at herself because this girl clearly doesn't understand the obvious.

Stephanie frowns. "You think you're dangerous? But you didn't try to eat me or anything. Do you lose it during the full moon or something?"

 _Lose what? What could I possibly have left to lose?_ She can't find the words to say this, so Cassandra just shakes her head.

"Then what's the problem?"

The problem. The problem is that she is a horror that people flee from screaming. The problem is that she has nowhere else. The problem, the problem...

"Rain," she says suddenly.

"What?"

"Rain." Cassandra repeats, already running through maps of nearby caves. "Cold. Sick." Humans get sick very easily, she knows this much. She points at Stephanie, remember to keep her claws sheathed. "Shelter."

"I need shelter? You'll take me to shelter?" Cassandra nods. Stephanie's eyes are wide--she can't smell the rain or taste the changes in the wind the way Cassandra can, which means she probably won't be able to smell the wolves if they come looking, or tell the poisonous mushrooms from the safe ones, or detect incoming threats in this city of hers...

Suddenly the forest is full of dangers that Stephanie doesn't know how to handle, things she needs to _learn_ how to handle if she wants to survive, but Cassandra--Cassandra can teach her that. Cassandra can help her. Cassandra _wants_ to help her. She can't remember the last time she _wanted_ something like this.

_(She wants to do many things with Stephanie)_

"Come on," she says, turning away. Stephanie follows her into the woods, her pace cautious--but it's the caution of one who's worried about being led into an ambush, not one who's waiting for the beast they're following to turn on them. Not one who's preparing to spring an attack of her own.

 _Crazy girl,_ Cassandra thinks.

_Crazy girl,_ she thinks in the days and weeks to come, as Stephanie talks and talks and _talks_ about everything and nothing, about the past (the good bits coming in waves, the bad ones offered in careful snippets), the present (the wonders she's seen, which always impress her, the dangers they encounter, which never really seems to bother her), and the future (she wants to be a bounty hunter, a private detective, a master thief).

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Stephanie asks Cassandra to teach her how to fight after she sees her in action, when she comes back for one session after another until Cassandra is no longer terrified of hurting her. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Steph seems to understand her lessons so well, and seems to understand when Cass starts to shake and scream over her inability to _find the fucking words_ just as well.

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, after Stephanie sees her washing off blood in the river and stares at her breasts instead of her red-rimmed mouth. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Stephanie beds down on night after night, trusting Cassandra to keep watch.

She's giving Cassandra a purpose that isn't just about survival, isn't something that makes her sick the way her father's purposes always did. And the fact that she think Cassandra _deserves_ this purpose has got to mean there's something wrong with her. Right?

 _Crazy girl,_ Cassandra--or Cass, the name Steph/Stephanie has started using for her--thinks when she sees the love, the _lust_ in Stephanie's body language towards her. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, for every word Steph painstakingly teaches her, for every sin she hears Cassandra spell out and quietly forgives.

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, hearing Stephanie rage against both their fathers, insisting that David Cain _deserved_ to die as much as Arthur Brown did. _Crazy girl,_ Cass thinks, the first time Steph offers to remove some of the more irritating sticks from her hair. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Steph strokes a patch of her fur and talks about how soft it is.

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Stephanie breaks down crying in her arms after a bad dream, lets Cass comfort her, and Cass _actually_ pulls it off _._ _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, when Steph does the same for her, saying that it's all right for Cass to cry, even though monsters aren't supposed to cry.

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, the first time their lips touch. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, the first time Steph explores her wretched body and finds beauty in its strangeness. _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, looking at her face reflected in Stephanie's bright eyes, and seeing the desperate need in it, combined with just a little bit of hope.

 _Crazy girl,_ she thinks, and of all the names Steph has for her, of all precious few names she manages to find for Steph, she thinks that might be the best one.


	3. Cell Block Waltz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frozen/Incredibles Prison AU, a little out of chronological order, not canon compliant with Incredibles 2 or Syndrome's death at the end of Incredibles.

The first time Elsa sees Violet Parr, she's making her way across a TV screen, invisible except for the blood painting her like every scarlet-letter metaphor Elsa's ever heard of. Her hands are held in glowing cuffs and Mr. Incredible is the one shepherding her along, hand held up as if that can do anything to protect them from the cameras. INVISIBLE GIRL KILLS SYNDROME, the headlines scream.

"Isn't he supposed to be her dad?" Helga Sinclair asks. "That's kind of fucked up."

Violet--not that Elsa knows her name yet, of course--doesn't falter as she approaches the SRP van. Elsa wonders if she's crying and tries to remember if she cried the day she was locked up.

(She can't, can't remember anything except the sound flash-frozen turkey makes when it crumbles to shards and her sister screaming _I hate you_ as they stood over three corpses)

Just before Invisible Girl enters the van, Mr. Incredible pulls her close; Elsa can't decide if he's trying to hug her or snap her like a matchstick. Then he's staggering away, face working behind his mask, and leaping up into the shadows.

"Well, that was some soap-opera worthy shit right there," Maleficent muses, tapping a foam-padded horn thoughtfully. "Is _Fast and Furious 20_ on yet?"

Invisible Girl is too young to be locked up the adult super-villainess' facility, but neither was Elsa, and besides, this is the only place that can possibly hold girls like them. So they compromise by putting her there, but not releasing her name, which isn't really a compromise at all because it still leaves Invisible Girl royally fucked.

The day she steps into the common area the first time she's pale and wan, hair sticking out in every direction as her shock collar blinks in time with her heart. She's greeted with the customary cries of "new fish" and "hey baby," along with a few more raucous additions like "super cunt" and "oh how the mighty have fallen!"

She doesn't seem to process any of it. Instead she just makes her way past the face, face blank and hands hanging loosely at her sides. Someone tries to come up behind her as she's getting her food and Invisible Girl whirls, smashing her tray across the other women's head. Then she turns right back around, her shoulders tensed ever so slightly, and shovels food into her mouth until the guards come to take her away to solitary.

"Crazy baby," Raggedly Sally croons, the stitched ruin of her face twitching and jumping.

"Looks like we found a new fish who's even nuttier than you were, Snow Queen," Sinclair joins in. Elsa flips her off, eyes still fixed on Invisible Girl's retreating back. The muscles jump as she walks, and Elsa suddenly wonders if she's realized to go to solitary, if she's glad for a chance to break down where no one can see her.

Later, Elsa comes home to find Invisible Girl on the other bed in her room, the bed that's been vacated ever since someone smuggled Evil-lyn (seriously, that's what she called herself) a poison apple and Elsa found her twitching on the floor.

"Hey," Invisible Girl says, looking up from the book she must have taken from the library. It's a battered copy of Ricky Jay's _Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women,_ and Elsa would make a joke about freaks reading about other freaks if she wasn't worried that being a freak herself would make the joke fall flat. "They told me to come here."

"Fine," Elsa mutters, resigning herself to the fact that her single-cell days are over--at least this one probably doesn't share Evil-lyn's mirror fetish. "House rules: no jerking off while I'm here, no bitching about your relationship drama with whatever fuckhunk you've got on the outside, and no killing yourself--last time that happened the place stank of shit for days."

She flops onto the bed and waits, waits, waits...."You're not going to ask about it?" She was sure the fish wouldn't have been able to resist.

"Guards already told me about it," Invisible Girl says.

"Figures," Elsa mutters, and pretends to go to sleep.

Violet lies on the ceiling with her arms crossed over her chest, taking deep, slow breaths like her parents taught her to do whenever she was captured. Which is basically what happened here, only no one's coming to rescue her, a thought that's hit her often enough it feels more like a slap to the face than a nauseas-inducing gut punch.

She's still trying to get comfortable on that lumpy mattress and avoid the sense of Evil-lyn's ghost peering at her (only it's not Evil-lyn's ghost, it's the ghost of someone else entirely, someone with spiky red hair and a broken heart and eyes like a dead fish) when she hears her new cellmate screaming.

Big-sister instincts have Violet up and running in a heartbeat, racing to where Elsa's thrashing in a tangle of wild white hair and spindly limbs. "Wake up," she barks, pinning Elsa's shoulders as gently as she can before she can fall off the bed.

 _"Don't!"_ Elsa cries, her voice a heartbroken wail. "Mom, don't..." Her eyes fly open, and for a moment they're blank blue disks without pupils or irises. She sits up with a gasp, the uniform stretching in Violet's grip, and for a moment she can glimpse an ugly old burn on her shoulder.

Elsa twists to face her, eyes back to human and a thousand times more terrifying. Violet swallows, grip going slack. "I...."

"Get the fuck away from me," Elsa whispers.

Violet does as she's told, staggering away and sliding back under the covers. She starts taking deep, slow breaths again, this time making them as loud and exaggerated as she can, the way she used to do for Dash whenever he had a nightmare. After a while, she thinks Elsa might be joining in.

Elsa doesn't go back to sleep that night, Violet thinks, and Violet doesn't sleep at all.

"My parents were dipshits," Elsa tells her, later, when they've long since graduated to the same bed. "They thought Supers were a curse from God. They tortured me whenever they caught me using my powers, or just even taking off the stupid gloves they made me wear. I spent years without touching my own skin. They homeschooled me, too, locked me in my room--fuck, I probably have more freedom in this dump then I ever did with them."

"I'm sorry," Violet says, not knowing what else to say. She strokes Elsa's hair, admiring how lush and soft it is.

"I froze their blood," Elsa says. "It tore through their bodies in little spikes, like rubies. They died screaming." Her voice is distant and tired, as if she's up late reading a story she doesn't really care for to a child who just _won't_ go to sleep. "And you know what? I wasn't even trying to kill them. I was trying to kill Hans."

"Your sister's boyfriend?" Violet asks, remembering something one of the other prisoners said.

"You mean that scum-sucking, abusive, manipulative parasite who crawled into Anna's life while I was too busy hating myself and everyone else to notice?" Elsa lets out a snort of laughter. "Yeah, him. She was coming home with bruises, and Mom and Dad didn't care as long as she was covering it up, and she kept telling me it was _true love."_ Elsa sighs. "What bullshit."

Violet would like to believe in true love, would like to believe that what her parents have is love and that means it might be possible for other people, possible for _her._ She's not sure if true love deserves to exist in a world like this, though; she wonders if it can only truly blossom in a universe that deserves it.

"We were at Thanksgiving," Elsa says, "And everything was so _nice_ and _happy_ and _normal_ and my arm was killing me because dad had nearly broken it _again_ and the steam from the turkey was fucking up Anna's makeup so I could see the new marks and Hans was saying they were _engaged_ and Anna was smiling even though it must have hurt like fuck and our parents didn't even _care_ and I just....I just...."

"Saw red," Violet muses. "Stopped caring about what people thought of you, stopped caring about your parents or your responsibilities or any of that shit, stopped thinking about _anything_ except doing something, making it _stop_." Her voice is shaking a little by the end, and she feels Syndrome's blood warm on her face.

"Yeah," Elsa says, shifting so that their eyes meet, bright in the dimness. "Yeah, a lot like that."

She squeezes Violet's hand. "Anna hates me. She called the cops while I was trying to put Hans' head back on--I guess I was a little nuts at the time." Elsa laughs again, even colder than before. "She said I was a monster. You know, Anna, she...I was always her hero, no matter how much our parents kept us apart so she wouldn't figure out what I was. She loved, took care of me whenever Mom or Dad smacked me around too much. And then I--"

"Did what you should have done," Violet says firmly. "If she can't figure that out it's on her."

Elsa blinks, nuzzling into Violet's neck. "You really don't regret what you did, did you?" she asks.

"No." Violet runs her finger up Elsa's wrist, tracking the slow, steady pulse of her blood. "And I don't think you do, either."

Back in the early days, they run into each other in the library and end up exchanging comments about books, small things about the stupidity of one plot line or the brilliance of another, conversations anyone could have had. As time passed, these little exchanges grow longer, until Elsa can't ignore what's happening any long.

She watches as Invisible Girl worked out, face slick with sweat as she pumped irons or jogged or paced or did whatever the hell ex-superheroes did for her workout routines. Elsa liked to pretend that she wasn't fascinated by the flex of Invisible Girl's muscles, that it wasn't an interesting game to try and catch the little purple flicker in Invisible Girl's eyes, that it didn't bring a strange smile to her lips to notice Invisible Girl staring back at her as she stared.

Elsa tells herself that it's just lust, not love, and in the beginning that might be just what it is. She's lusted over girls in prison before and been lusted over in return, occasionally fucking one of them if she thought it might suit her purposes. The thought of fucking someone with no purpose rarely stays in her mind for long, though, until the all-too-visible Invisible Girl shows up.

Elsa blames this....fixation, whatever it is, on the night night she woke up to find Invisible Girl kneeling by her side, eyes full of concern. No one has ever done that for Elsa, not since Anna, and she always thought she'd punch whoever tried.

She didn't, and she doesn't do it for all the many times afterwards when she finds Invisible Girl by her bed, murmuring soft comforts Elsa doesn't think she deserves. She notices the bags under the other girl's eyes and wonders if she sleeps it all, and then why the wondering bothers her so much.

Violet moves through the halls quickly and carefully, her back to the wall, always listening for the noisy voices of guards and the automatic protection they provide. She doesn't care if her clothes grow smelly and rumpled or her hair is rapidly becoming a mess; she stays away from the shower and laundry at all costs.

It only lasts for so long. Four supervillainessses pin her in the hallway, where no one who hears will bother to come, glinting shivs outshone by their bright vicious eyes. She doesn't remember their names, doesn't know how long they've been here, doesn't even know if her parents locked them up or if this is just an attack against the superhero community in general.

"Give us your name," they whispers when she's aching and bruised, blood streaming from cuts on her limbs. She gave them a run for their money, even though she always knew she would lose. "Give us _all_ the names _,_ Vissy." Vissy for Invisible Girl, one of the few things she has left from her old life. "You can't still be loyal to those fuckward Supes, can you?"

She doesn't answer, because as messy as her feelings for her parents and the other adults are right now, she will die a thousand deaths to keep Dash and Jack-Jack safe. She spits in their faces, waiting for the humiliation and the pain. She's been scared for so long that a little bit more fear doesn't matter that much anymore.

Over one woman's shoulder, she sees a flicker of white hair, snow-lush and ice-bright.

Elsa doesn't announce herself before plunging a blade into the first woman's throat, under the shock collar, ripping it out and slamming it into someone else's neck in one smooth motion. The others tackle her to the ground, so she sinks her teeth into somebody's cheek and slams her fist into the second one's cunt. They stagger backward, yelping, so Elsa grabs her shiv and goes in for the kill.

They're all dead in under two minutes.

Violet's jaw creaks open as she watches blood splash across the floor. She wants to say _thank you_ or ask _why_ , but all that comes out is, "How?"

"Practice," Elsa mutters. Later, she'll tell Violet about slicing pillows and towels, about how she focused on building an ugly reputation while other prisoners worried about chocolates and dildos and all the outside indulgences Elsa never got to experience in the first place.

For now, she just grabs Violet by the hand and tugs her done the hall, away from the carnage. They're long gone before anyone discovers what Elsa's done.

They clean off blood and grime in the bathroom, empty at this hour. Invisible Girl's too shocked to notice when Elsa strips her, although Elsa thinks her shoulders sag slightly in relief when she doesn't go any farther.

The light flickers back into her eyes, though, at the sight of blood staining Elsa's side. "You're bleeding!"

"Just a scratch," Elsa promises, holding out a hairbrush--she likes carrying around useful stuff like that, it helps her feel grounded. "Here." She turns away, feeling awkward for some reason as Invisible Girl works at the knots in her hair way with a will, soft grunts of effort echoing through the room.

As for Elsa, she sets about cleaning her hands as best she can, watching red and pink swirl around her feet. Her fingers are shaking ever so slightly, even though this isn't anywhere near her first bloodbath.

After they've dried off, Elsa gets some bandages and they tend to their wounds as best they could, both letting out little hisses of pain. Then they slip back out into the halls of the prison, as whispers and cries echo around them. Elsa wonders if someone found the bodies of her latest victims, if anyone cares who did it.

It's only when they're back in their room that Invisible Girl asks, "Why?"

Elsa looks away. "I don't know," she says. It's better than saying 'those women reminded me of Hans and my parents.' It's better than saying 'you're pretty and kind and I don't want you gone.' It's better than seeing 'I don't want to go to the library when you're not there, even though I barely know you.' It's better than anything else she can think of right now.

For a moment there's silence, and then Invisible Girl nods. "I'm Violet," she says. Elsa blinks.

Her first thought is _that's a lovely name_ and her second is _she_ _doesn't trust me with her last name._ But why would she? The first one is sacrifice enough. (She will give up her second name in another four months, but things have already begun here)

"I'm Elsa," Elsa says, not sure whether Violet already knows this, and turns away before anything else slips out.

The next day, the girl follows to her to the library, to the gymnasium, to breakfast, to the showers, always hovering at a discreet distance. Elsa should tell her to stop, and would if the sight of Violet's black mane out of the corner of her eye didn't make her sag with some strange relief, if the thought of being _needed_ , even for reasons of pure protection, didn't make her heart skip.

No one has needed her since Anna. She didn't realize how much she missed it, and it takes far too long for her to realize she risks needing Violet in return.

Helen Parr looks thin and tired on the other side of the glass, older than Violet remembers her. "You're hurt," she says, eyes narrowing.

"Someone pushed me in the corridor," Violet lies easily. "I'm _fine,_ Mom." Helen doesn't press, and this stings more than it should. Her parents were never good at pressing even before their daughter became a murderer, why should they start now.

"How's Dash and Jack-Jack?" she asks instead.

"They're....healthy," her mother says carefully. "Jack-Jack's getting stronger; we haven't been able to find a limit on his powers yet. He fell through a wall yesterday!" Her eyes twinkle with forced cheer.

"And Dash?"

"He," Helen sighs. "We set up a therapist for him, for the nightmares. We've decided to keep him out of the field until things get a little better."

Violet blinks. "You guys are still going out on patrol?" She wasn't sure why she expected otherwise, but the idea of her parents still living their lives that way, without _her_ , feels strange.

"Of course. We've still got an obligation to Metroville, after all." Her mother straightens just by saying it, and Violet wonders just how much superheroing is holding her together, giving her some control in the bloody fuck-tornado that has become the Parrs' life.

Violet has a sudden, cruel urge to burst that bubble. "So how many murder jokes do you get a night, on average?"

"Violet...."

"That many, huh? Maybe Dad wouldn't have thrown me to the wolves if he'd known it was gonna be so bad for PR."

" _Violet,"_ her mother repeats, looking so weary. "You turned your back on everything we taught you to uphold. You broke the _law,_ you took a _life_ , in _front of your brother!_ What were we supposed to do?"

"Cover it up," Violet says, weaving her trembling fingers together and pulling until it hurts. "Forget about it, just like Dad did with Buddy. Make up for what you _did,_ by hauling that fucker out of the turbine in the _first_ place."

"That's not who we are," her mother whispers, voice shaking. "That's not who we raised you to be!"

"No, you raised me to be _nice_ and _good_ and _quiet_ and fucking _invisible."_ Violet hisses. She can barely breathe; the collar is burning up her throat. "Then you tried to make Dash and I pay the price for your sins and you're _surprised_ when things when to shit?"

"I never wanted this," her mother says, tears glittering in her eyes. "Your father and I, _we never wanted this."_

"I know," Violet says, slumping back in her chair. "I wish you did, sometimes. It would make it easier to hate you."

Down the line, she hears distant screaming. A girl with red braids slams down the receiver and stalks away, tossing curses over her shoulder. Violet tilts her head back a little and sees Elsa slumped at the vacated station, head in her hands.

She looks back at her own station to see her mother frantically scrubbing at the tears rolling down her cheeks, hands shaking. Violet sits and watches her cry, wishing she felt something other than awkwardness.

"Your trial's in a few weeks," her mother says, collecting herself. "We'll be there."

"To testify against me," Violet says, staring down at her hands. "I know."

Her mother doesn't say anything. There's nothing left to say.

That night, Violet pushes Elsa against the wall of their cell and kisses her, because she feels so _alone_ after the talk with her mother and she sees the same aloneness in Elsa's eyes and all she wants is to make it go away.

Elsa kisses back, and then they topple onto a bed. They teach each other what they've learned over the years, what Elsa's learned from brief flirtations with women she usually had to drive off at knifepoint later, and what Violet's learned from sweaty fumblings with girls who usually ignored her later on.

Together, their combined knowledge becomes something that could, maybe, be described as making love. It's awkward, and messy, and their collars keep scraping together, but they pull it off.

They find themselves doing it again and again, and it gets easier every time.

They fuck, and they don't talk about it, and for a while it's just helping each other with their aloneness, friends with benefits at the most. They spar together, as best they can, Violet teaching Elsa some of the more refined moves she learned as a super heroine in training and Elsa teaching her the dirtier moves she learned from personal experience. They spot each other working out, exchange notes in the library, cover one another in the shower.

They become a pair, watching each other's backs, keeping each other safe from the sharp words and sharper blades of villainesses and madwomen. When people tease them, the words friendly or cruel or both, they respond with smiling glares and flung barbs of their own. They don't realize how good they've become at protecting each other's backs until they've stopped doing it for their own personal benefits.

The collars have left too much pent up heat in her skin, so Elsa takes cold showers, and Violet covers the door for her. Afterward Violet makes her sit on the floor until she's not _quite_ so cool to the touch and idly runs her fingers through Elsa's dripping hair, weaving it in frosty braids. At the start, it's just intimacy for the purpose of intimacy, taking the opportunity to explore the girly little things neither really got to have. It doesn't stay that way. Nothing stays at it should.

When they start talking to each other more than they have before, when they start laughing at each other's lame jokes, when they start holding onto each other because they can instead of simply for comfort, they pretend they don't know what's happening. _It can't be love,_ they say to themselves, _We barely know each other._

But strangest things can grow in the coldest, most barren places.

Elsa wakes up from nightmares and isn't scared, because Violet is at her side. Sometimes she finds Violet crying and ends up kissing her tears away, the taste soft and precious on her lips. She learns Violet's heartbeat as well as her own, learns Violet's likes and dislikes even better than her own because Violet was allowed time to develop them.

"Tell me about what it's like to grow up almost-normal," she says, because that's all Violet can give. "Tell me what it's like when your parents don't lock you in a cage." So Violet does, tells her about lbiraries and amusement parks and swimming pools--tell her, too, about bullying and loneliness and breaking down in the school bathroom because your nascent tits just _won't stop_ disappearing and reappearing and it's not like you can call your mom for help on such an embarrassing thing.

She tells more intimate stories too--about her parents, her brothers, her first forays into super heroism. She talks about the terror of being suspended in electrocuffs alongside your loved ones and the joy of taking down a battlefield of soldiers with them. She talks about trying to predict where Dash would go because catching him was out of the question, talks about what it's like to not know what Jack-Jack is becoming, talks about first tooth and first crushes, talks about what it was like to have parents who'd honed their inhuman abilities like sharp blades. 

Elsa listens, even though it hurts both her and Violet. The pain of memory can be a good kind of pain, a pain to remind you that you can still feel at all. She gives as much as she dares in return, talks about the worse punishments mixed with the rare expression of kindness from her parents, the happy moments with her sister, the books that Anna smuggled to her like talismans that kept her (mostly) sane in that room.

And Violet is the first person she talks to about the ice.

"It's like a living creature," Elsa says as they stand in the shower together, watching water glitter around their feet like the ice is talking about. "Buzzing and burning under my skin. It needs to freeze--to _feed--_ all the time."

She swirls the water with her toe. "It sound awful, but some days it was the only friend I had, and I didn't know if I loved or hated it more. It never hurt me the way my parents did, but it took away my free will more than they ever could. It was a closer companion than Anna, but it was the reason I was so lonely in the first place.

"I can feel it, still," she admits. "Sometimes it's a hole in the back of my head, sometimes it's a chill when I don't _get_ chills, sometimes it feels just like it always did and I think I could use my power all over again--until the collar hurts me." She rubs her neck ruefully.

"I hated my powers," Violet says. "I tried to ignore them as much as I can, and for the most part I succeeded--right up until I actually _needed_ them, and then I could barely get the bastards to work. But I managed it, somehow, because I didn't have a choice. And then I grew to love them, because I'd never realized how strong they could make me...and then they were gone."

She runs a hand off Elsa's too-slender back, feeling the other girl's spine flex at her touch. "I get what you mean about holes."

"Vi...."

Blood. Blood everywhere. Syndrome's blood, her blood, Dash's blood (Dash didn't bleed, you didn't let him bleed). Dead women on the ground, eyes dead and empty. Her first kills since Syndrome, who was supposed to be her only kill (there are no rules in prison, especially not for freaky cunts like us)

 _Super's Whore,_ they called Elsa, driving her to the ground while Violet's back was turned. The name burns in Violet's ears with a sharpness to strip paint.

"Come on, Violet, we need to get _out_ of here...."

The shiv in her hand was a Christmas present. She got Elsa a magazine that she'd punched someone in line for. Anna hadn't come. Helen had, but she'd only been able to stay for a few minutes before they were screaming at each other again and the guards had dragged Violet away.

"Violet."

Hands on hers, tugging her up, pulling her away. They run to the showers, their hiding place. Violet can't speak or see, but she can feel. She can feel how thin Elsa is, how sweaty, and it dawns on her how desperately theater girl needs to be cold.

"It's all right, my love. It's all right."

No, no, not _my love._ It's a rule they can't break right, not even they who have broken so many rules. This is just for mutual comfort, mutual gain. Elsa is too ~~perfect~~ broken for love, and Violet is too poisonous.

She wants to Elsa this, but her words still aren't working.

"It's okay, Vi." _Vi?_ Since when is she Vi? Does she like being called Vi? She can't tell. It's been so long since what she wants has mattered to anyone, including her.

Does it matter to Elsa? She thinks it might. The thought scares her.

"They deserved it." Yes, they did. Everyone deserved it. Syndrome deserved it, and so did his guards--the guards didn't count to her parents, they were just lackeys, most of them weren't actually did, they weren't precious Bobby Pine so Violet didn't have to suffer for it.

"It's okay," Elsa repeats. A lie. A beautiful lie. Violet kisses her then, to thank her for that beautiful lie. She can feel Elsa's surprise in the way her hands clench, but she kisses back.

They make love in the shower, clutching at the precious, fragile, very nearly lost life in each other's bodies. Blood runs away down the drain, and Violet lets her fear and shame run away with it.

"Are we monsters?" Violet asks her.

Elsa doesn't know what to say. "Do you think we are?"

"We've both done pretty monstrous things. And maybe we had reasons, but...every bad guy I ever fought had a reason."

"Monsters don't want forgiveness," Elsa says. "I want Anna to forgive me." It's all she wants, all she ever wanted, at least until she found herself wanting Violet, too.

"I don't know if I want my family to forgive me," Violet says. "I don't know if I should even bother wanting."

"But you want me to forgive you," Elsa says. At least, she thinks that's what Violet is saying. It's probably very fucked up, but she likes the ice aof someone seeking her forgiveness.

"Yeah," Violet says, face thoughtfully behind her ever-growing curtain of hair, the curtain that Elsa only ever sees behind these days. 'Yeah, I guess I do."

Elsa kisses her. "Than you have it." She doesn't know if that's really how it works, and right now she doesn't care.

Everyone once in a while one of them ends up in solitary, for one fight or another. It breaks Elsa in a way it can't for Violet, because Violet's only trauma is in the here and now, but for Elsa whenever the door closes she's sure her parents are going to be on the other side.

Violet learns to hold her close, to let her scream cruel, mad things she doesn't mean into Violet's jumpsuit. She weaves braids in Elsa's hair the way Anna used to do, while saying things that Anna could never say and mean: _I l_ _ove you, I need you, I see your flaws and I don't care, I'll never leave you._

They're both broken, but if they hold on tight enough they can keep the shards of themselves from drifting apart. Soon it gets so that Violet knows she'd never survive prison without Elsa, and Elsa can't remember how she survived prison without Violet, and for now they're both perfectly fine with that.

Violet sits in the courtroom in a scratchy pink dress and misses Elsa, wishing with all her heart that the other girl was here to say something cutting or indifferent about the people judging Violet's face. If she closes her eyes she can imagine Elsa sitting behind her in a neat blue suit, head high, regal as a queen and sharp-edged as a blade.

The lawyers talk, saying things she doesn't care about. The doctors talk, looking vaguely ill as they describe exactly what having a force field opened inside his skull did to Syndrome.

Her parents talk, looking ridiculously out of place in her masks and suits. They cry, they say she's a good girl, they don't even try to deny or explain what she's done. Violet can't really focus on their words.

When she sees Dash, it's like everything snaps back into clarity. It's only been a few months since they last saw each other, but her little brother looks like he's aged years. His hair is grown out, brushing his shoulders in a shaggy yellow mane. He slips into the stand with his head bowed, hugging himself.

Violet would like to tear herself free of these cuffs, leave most of her skin behind if necessary, and run to him. She would like to have her powers back so she could blow off the heads of anyone who keeps them apart ever again. She would like to turn back to time to the day she started all this, because the only thing she regrets about killing Syndrome is the trauma Dash experienced in the process, and she would do anything to save him from it

She can't do anything of these things. All she can do is sit and wonder if this pain is anything like what Hans and Elsa's parents felt; it really does feel like she's being ripped apart from the inside out.

The lawyer asks questions about the day Syndrome broke out of prison, when he was was filling Metroville's streets with superpowered robots for the Incredibles to fight. "They made us to stay home," Dash said, not looking up. "They were scared he was going to go after Jack-Jack again."

She and Dash had fought, screamed protests, but they remembered the rattle of gunfire, remembered how small their little brother had looked in Syndrome's grip, and caved. They'd paced at home, angry, frightened, snapping at each other. Violet had almost wished for Syndrome to show up so she could kick his ass and get this whole clusterfuck over with.

Of course, when he _actually_ showed up, she'd never regretted any wish more in her entire life.

Dash tells the lawyer about how Jack-Jack had been encased in an energy field, disabling his powers, and how they'd been no match for Syndrome on their own. How their parents had only burst in at the last the minute, and...

"Your sister waited until he was restrained to take his life," the lawyer says, his voice careful. Kind. Coaxing the poor, scarred little boy into facing a terrible truth about someone he loves.

Dash doesn't say anything.

"Is that what happened?" the lawyer prods.

Dash still doesn't say anything. Violet is getting nervous. She squeezes her hands together, hoping that he won't, he won't, he won't....

"She didn't tell why, did she? She didn't tell you what Syndrome was doing before Mom and Dad busted in." The lawyer looks confused; this isn't what they rehearsed.

He straightens, his eyes locking on Violet's through their matching domino masks. She shakes her head ever so lightly. _Don't. Don't do this to yourself._

Dash doesn't listen. Dash never listens.

"He was trying to rape me."

The courtroom goes very still. At the same it grows very loud, because Violet can hear Syndrome laughing in her head, _I'm gonna ruin you, you little bastard. You think you can take everything I ever wanted without a price?_

"He was trying to rape me and make Violet watch. He was touching..." His breath hitches, smooths out. ".... _Everywhere_. I couldn't make him stop. Violet couldn't get out of the trap in time. He was laughing and going on about what _exactly_ he was going to do."

No. He's not supposed to admit that, except to his therapist. He's going to move on, he's going to forget, or if not that at least learn to blame her the way Elsa did with Anna. She took the hit for him for a _reason._ Big siblings protect little ones, and how the fuck does Dash not know that?

Violet can't look at her parents, can't see what they're thinking. Did they know, and ask him not to tell? Did he hide it from them? She's too scared to find out.

"His hand was in my pants when Mom and Dad showed up," Dash says, eyes looking very distant behind the mask. "He fought them, they took him down, and they were _reading him his rights._ And I knew he was going to come back again, and again, and a-fucking-gain, and I couldn't take it. So I started pulling myself together, powering up, getting rid to rip out his _heart."_

More gasps. Their parents definitely didn't know about this, from the sound of things. Violet herself had only known in the way you know about stuff without admitting it to yourself.

"Violet saw, even if Mom and Dad didn't. She was faster than me, for once." Dash snorts, a laugh with no joy behind it. "She blew Syndrome's head off so I couldn't get my hands dirty, and then she ran so when the cops came they wouldn't go to our house. And then she was gone."

His voice is steady now, his gaze level. No one in the courtroom can breathe, or maybe that's just Violet.

The prosecution rests. The defense has no questions. Dash walks back to his seat with his head held high, shooting Violet a smile in front of the world, and she loves and fears for him in equal measure.

"Was he telling the truth?" Elsa asks, weaving strands of her white hair into Violet's black mane.

"Every word," Violet says, gazing at the cell ceiling like it has an excuse for all this.

"But now the jury's going to sympathize with you, right?"

"Yeah, and every time Dash goes out to face a two-bit criminal, they'll thrown it back in his face." Violet says, rubbing her head. "Dash needs to fight crime, he needs to _run._ I don't know if it's a biological imperative for him or what, but he has to. And every time he steps out on those streets, they'll be someone to say something awful, rubbing at the sore, until he's tempted to do what he did to Syndrome, only _I won't be there to stop him."_

She sighs, folding her head into the curve of Elsa's neck, wonder if her skin is just a bit too warm.

"Do you think that's what Anna won't forgive me?" Elsa asks after a while. "To avoid rubbing at the sore?" Her words sound thoughtful, composed, as if she's talking about something that doesn't bother her at all.

"I don't know," Violet says. "Maybe. I mean, the people you killed were terrible, but she still loved them. It's not as clean-cut as it was for me and Dash."

"And it wasn't really that clean-cut for you, so that means I'm fucked," Elsa says.

"If it makes you feel any better, I forgive you," Violet says. "And even if Anna doesn't....she's still living the life you wanted for her, a better life, without them. That's a kind of forgiveness, isn't it?"

Elsa blinks. In all her years of waiting, she's never thought of it that way.

Despite Dash's testimony, the trial doesn't go in Violet's favor. Her brother is not there for the sentencing. Her parents are strangers behind their masks.

The other supervillainesses laugh at her, just a little, just the craziest and most foolish ones. Violet laughs with them, hard and mean, as she devours her food alongside Elsa.

She doesn't start crying until later, when she breaks down in Elsa's arms as they huddle in their cell. Elsa cries with her, in a way she didn't--couldn't--let herself cry after her own sentencing.

If Elsa weren't with her, Violet thinks, she'd have ended it already. She doesn't tell Elsa this, doesn't want to put this level of responsibility on her shoulders.

Besides, killing herself is against the house rules.

Down the hall, someone screams. They've both learned not to jump by now, but Violet clings on a little more tightly.

Helen comes, one last time. They talk about what Dash said. Or rather, they fight about what Dash said.

"We're not murderers," Helen repeats, over and over. "You could have stopped your brother without killing Syndrome."

 _But I didn't want to,_ is what Violet doesn't bother to say aloud. The cycle of escape-torture-fight-recapture had only just begun, and she and Dash had already gotten sick of it. She has no idea how comic-book superheroes handled it for so long, much less her parents. She doesn't care enough to know.

"Anna came back again," Elsa says later. "She said it was just because she wanted to torture herself, but I don't know. When I said that I loved her she didn't tell me to go fuck myself." She giggles. "What a low fucking bar."

"I don't think my parents are my parents anymore," Violet says, looking at her hands. "I don't think they _want_ to be my parents. My dad hasn't had the strength to visit me and my mom isn't much better. I don't think she's coming back."

"Is it better?" Elsa asks. "Cutting off the last threads, letting go?"

"If that's what you want, sure," Violet says. "I guess the important thing is finding people who'll never let go of _you,_ as long as you don't let for them." She straddles Elsa, their eyes locking. "Like me."

"Like me," Elsa repeats, so far beyond hiding her feelings after weeks and months of holding onto this strange, beautiful, fallen Super. Their lips touch.

Elsa discovers that there are other people who can't let Violet go. She wakes up to find a young blond boy in a homemade white domino mask and a "costume" made out of improved black jeans and a hoodie staggering through the wall. There's a boy clutched to his chest, his soft blue glow lighting up the room.

"Finally, Vi--what the _fuck?"_ the boy hisses, staggering backwards at the sight of their entangled bodies. His small companion whimpers.

"Dash? Shit shit _shit!"_ Violet rolls out of bed, adjusting her clothes, looking as relieved as Elsa feels that they're still wearing their jumpsuits for once. "What you--oh, _Jack-Jack!"_ Her voice breaks as she grabs for the little boy and pulls him to her chest, rocking him gently.

The boy shifts on his feet, looking awkward. "So. Um. We're here to get you out."

"Of course you are, you brave _stupid--"_ Violet's cut off as Jack-Jack's eyes flicker open, and is do all toddlers have that bright spark of intelligence in their eyes? Jack-Jack presses his fingers to Violet's collar, wrapping his small fingers around the plastic, and breaks it with a soft _crunch._ The lights flicker out as pieces cascade down Violet's suit, clattering to the floor.

She sways, eyes bright. "Oh my _God."_

"We need to go," the blond boy--Dash, he looks even younger than Violet described him--whispers. "Jack-Jack's scrambling the cameras, don't ask me how, but I don't think he can hold it for long."

Violet turns to Elsa and holds the boy with glowing hands out. "Come on," she says, like it's obvious. Like it's _nothing,_ for Elsa to be offered the first real freedom she's had since she was six years old.

Her breath catches. "I--I _can't."_ Who will she be, outside a cage? How can she possibly leave when all she's had are bars to define her? And what about Anna? What if this kills any chance of forgiveness she has?

"Your sister can't forgive you until you forgive yourself," Violet whispers. "We may be monsters, but we have _reasons_ for doing what we've done. And you've suffered from those reasons long enough."

Elsa looks into Violet's eyes and realizes that if she has to wake up without them tomorrow, knowing that she tossed away the opportunity to be with her beloved under an open sky out of the same emotion--fear--that drove her parents to imprison her, she will never forgive herself or take forgiveness from anyone else.

She takes the little boy.

Her looks at her, eyes wise and careful, and she understands why Violet loves him, and also why she confesses to being afraid of him sometimes. His hands press to her neck and glow blue, and then, then....

The weight is gone for the first time in _years_ , and Elsa's neck is so raw and tender she wants to cry out. There's something rushing in her veins, a _life_ that all her memories were just pale imitations of, fierce and bright and _hungry._

 _I'm back,_ the ice whispers, and she doesn't fear it the way she used to, even though it's still so _much._

She sways and Dash plucks the baby from her grip while Violet pulls Elsa's arm around her shoulder, holding her up. Dash grabs Violet's free hand, adjusting the still-glowing Jack-Jack. "I can't run us all out of here," he whispers, looking ashamed. "Can you...?"

Elsa clenches her jaw. It's been so long since Violet used her power, more than half a year at least, and the last time she let her abilities get rusty she almost died in a plane crash.

Violet's got to be thinking of the same thing, but she just grits her teeth and raises her head, taking the deep, slow breaths that have become so to Elsa over the years. Elsa tries not to flinch as she disappears...it spreads to her brothers...and then Elsa looks down to see her own body melt into nothing. A little disquieting, but it's not like the frigid tingling in her blood (in her brain) is any better.

A hand she can't see tugs her forward and Elsa shivers as they pass through a wall. And another, and another, and....the alarms go off. Because of course they fucking do.

"Shit." Violet's power flickers, black hair warping in and out of sight. There are pounding boots, prisoners yelling and cackling, a burst of song from Raggedly Sally. "Shit, shit, _shit."_

They tear through another wall and there are guards racing at them, weapons glinting, and Elsa suddenly can't remember if the prison authorities use rubble bullets. Violet throws up her hands, redirecting her power so that Dash and Jack-Jack are still hidden while she and Elsa can be seen behind the force-field that swallows them up like a hamster wheel.

It's the first Elsa has ever seen Violet's powers in action and even now, when people are _literally shooting at them,_ she finds herself looking at them and thinking _beautiful._

And then she's thinking _shit shit shit_ because the hamster wheel impression was rather accurate; Violet _rolls_ through the wall at a speed that would have Elsa vomiting if she had enough time to catch her breath, guards clattering out of the way like pinballs. They crash down one flight of stairs, than another, Jack-Jack flares brightest blue as they tear through three walls and quick succession and spill across the grass, through a fence, heading towards the woods, towards freedom....

Something hits them hard, a massive bolt of heat and _pain_ tearing through the force-field as Violet lets for a shriek. Elsa reaches for her, panicked, but the Parrs are already collapsing on top of each other in a heap.

Elsa staggers to her feet, throbbing all over, and glances over the massive energy cannon jutting from the prison walls, because of _course_ they put something like that upon since she and Violet were locked away. It's buzzing with electricity and rattling fit to burst--probably won't be able to manage another blast for awhile, not that it needs to.

More men are tearing out of the prison, weapons raised. Elsa thinks she can hear prisoners still cheering them on in the distance, although it sounds more like mockery now. Violet tries to raise herself to her feet, but slumps back with a groan, black hair hanging limply over her face.

Elsa whirls back to face them as the fear and panic burns cold inside, as silver crystals gather over her hands. Her first instinct is to shove it back down....but wait, that's what got her sealed away in her parents' house for all those years, wasn't it? That's what going to get her--and Violet, and her brothers--sealed away now.

 _You need me,_ the ice murmurs, voice silver-sharp between her ears. _Need me like you need her, like you need oxygen. What will do to keep what you need?_

 _Everything_ , Elsa replies, as a blur of red target sights lock on her heart.

She takes a deep, slow breath and lets that motherfucker go.

A storm of white explodes out of nothingness, rolling towards the guards like a tidal wave. It freezes bullets in midair, sends them clattering to the ground like broken toys before slamming into the guards, sending them crashing back into the prison. Elsa grits her teeth, fingers shaking with effort as a diamond-colored wall unfolds before their eyes, layers upon layers of ice forming an impenetrable barrier between them and their would-be captors.

 _Never again,_ she thinks, and says it aloud for good measure. "Never again, bitches."

Then she's falling in on herself, only for Violet to snatch her up with arms that have grown muscled from long months of prison weights and workouts. Elsa sucks in air as she's clutched to Violet's chest, realizing how very cold she is and how Violet holds her anyway.

"Wow," Violet breathes, and there is no fear or contempt in her words; she sounds awed and fascinated, like Anna, but also _overjoyed_ in a way Elsa has never heard anyone regarding her powers. "Just....wow."

"I know, right?" Elsa says, smiling. Dash lets out a sigh and she and Violet turn to the boys, help them upright. Violet pulls Dash close, murmuring praise and protective fury into his ear as they dart towards the woods. Elsa follows, clutching Jack-Jack to her chest.

He studies her with those strangely deep eyes, cooing gently, and she can almost _hear_ him asking _What are you doing to do now?_

And to him, the ice, her ghosts, her doubts, Elsa answers, _Whatever we want._

Anna wakes up from a bad dream about people she used to love and sits in bed for a while, hugging herself. Then she gets up, checks her phone for text, reminds herself that she's got an opponent with Olaf at four this afternoon. And at seven she has the thing with Kristoff...if she dares. She hopes she can.

She makes breakfast, listening to reports about some kind of bank robbery performed by the so-called "Snow Queen" and an invisible companion, before heading out to check her mail. In between the bills and magazines is a letter with no return address. It's a little damp of edges and smell of snowflakes and nightfall, of her sister.

Anna's breath catches and she holds the letter to her chest. Her first instinct is to rip it to shreds and forget she ever saw it. Her second is to turn it into the cops and use it to help them catch what everyone agrees is a _dangerous criminal._ Her third....

Distance and time have changed her, altered her perspective of that fatal Thanksgiving night no matter how she tried to fight it. And oh, how she tried. But maybe she's tired of fighting.

She open the letter carefully, not daring to read it yet. Then she glances up, the sensation of being watched buzzing across her skin. She glances in general direction of where that sensation is coming from and sees nothing...chides herself for her craziness....

Then reality warps, just a little, and she glimpses two women across the street, hands tightly clasped, dressed in hoodies and jeans. One of them has dark hair that Anna instinctively knows is dyed and a tentative, hopeful smile. The other has a protective arm around her companion's shoulders and chews her lip with a bit of worry.

Anna doesn't scream, doesn't run. She just stands there for a few seconds, heart in her mouth, then lifts her arm and makes a little writing motion. A promise to reply, if she dares. She hopes she can.

She turns back to her house and heads back in, the eyes following her until she's safely inside.

"Your hair's lame," Dash mutters, running his fingers through Violet's new pink waves as he sits next to her on the bed.

"You're one to talk," Violet replies, ruffling his golden nest affectionately.

"Jerk."

"Freak."

"Jailbird."

"You _wish_ you were cool enough for prison."

A car goes by outside and they both stiffen ever so slightly, but it rounds the corner and disappears.

"How are Mom and Dad?" Violet asks, ever so careful.

"Good. Not too depressed, definitely not suspicious, they showed up at my game last week and we kicked the Tiger's asses." Dash snuggles up against his big sister's side, displaying the affection he no longer bothers to hide because he doesn't know when he'll lose her again. "Where's your girlfriend?"

"Back at the safehouse. You know she painted the bathroom pink?"

Dash snickers at the idea. "That a theme for you guys?"

"Completely unrelated, thank you very much. I don't know if she's being passive-aggressive about the hair or if she just likes the aesthetic, but--" Jack-Jack drifts by, giggling to himself.

Violet sighs. "We should probably get him before he ends up in the TV again, right?"

"Probably." Dash doesn't move.

"So go get him, _Zippy_."

Dash narrows his eyes. "How many times have I told you not to use that name? I didn't fucking ask for it."

"Oooooh, li'l Dash made a swear....." Violet bears her teeth and curves her fingers into claws. "The tickle monster has something to say about that!" She lunges.

"Hey! Hey! Jesus, did prison give you age regression or something?"

"Or something," Violet says, giggling.

They always come back to each other, in the end. They hold each other and plot out schemes and heists, along with drawing up lists of all the outside things they're going to do, the things Elsa never experienced and Violet never really managed to enjoy until she had summer with--libraries, pools, firefights, walks in the woods or along city rooftops.

Sometimes, Dash gives Violet the names of criminals who can't keep their mouths shut, and they goes to hurt them in a way he can't. Sometimes Anna sends Elsa letters, letters of love and hope and tentative forgiveness, and Violet holds her hand as she reads each one, the precious words shaking in her grip.

They fight, sometimes, as all couples do. They cope with nightmares and bad dreams, the ugly sense of guilt crawling on their skin. They adjust to the terrifying nature of freedom, of being able to control themselves when they've had someone to control them for so long.

They test the limits of their powers; Violet's trying to warp light waves so she can try her hand at illusions, while Elsa's trying to see if she can forge weapons or armor out of her ice. Sometimes the ice takes Elsa, leaving her shaking with an inner cold, but Violet uses her force fields to contain her, whispers comforting words until she comes back to herself.

Violet's parents taught her how to disappear, and she manages to keep them one step ahead of the authorities. If they have to stand their ground, though, they will.

Both were a little frightened that what they had would crumble once it was no longer based on desperate need, but instead it's only grown in the fresh light of freedom. It's grown with every night spent giggling in dark libraries, every ridiculous hair change, every kiss under stars and fireworks, every promise that _I will stay, I will fight for you, I will love you as they are._

Their lives are not perfect. Perfection is an untenable goal. But they are alive, they are free, they are relatively safe, they have each other, and with the kind of lives they've lived that's more than enough.


End file.
